Mets Bring In Fences, Again

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The fences in right center at Citi Field will be brought in as much as 11 feet to give a boost to several Mets hitters.CreditChang W. Lee/The New York Times

By Tim Rohan

Nov. 18, 2014

Baseball’s “Moneyball” era has brought drastic changes in how managers handle their pitching staffs and where they position players on the field. Armed with newly revealing statistical analysis, scouts assess players differently, and fans view the game differently.

The latest frontier in baseball’s number-crunching revolution might be the dimensions of the field itself.

The Mets unveiled a new outfield fence on Tuesday that shortens the distances in right-center field, a move precipitated by the team’s examination of balls hit at Citi Field last season.

If the new contours produce a net advantage for the Mets next season, Ian Levin, the team’s 30-year-old manager of baseball analytics, might deserve as much credit as their hitters.

“Everything is information-driven now,” Levin said. “It’s all about information.”

Before Levin had the information, the Mets’ general manager, Sandy Alderson, had a hunch. Alderson and one of his assistants, John Ricco, watch most home games together from a suite next to the press box. On numerous occasions over the last few seasons, they watched a Mets batter take a swing and send a high fly ball toward right-center field about 390 feet away and thought, “Home run.”

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The changes in Citi Field's outfield fences will be the second in four seasons.CreditChang W. Lee/The New York Times

Then the ball would fall short of the wall, just another long out.

Why not move the fence in? Alderson wondered. He had moved the fences in three years earlier in both left and right field but sensed that another correction needed to be made. In August, he asked the Mets’ analytics team — Levin; T. J. Barra, manager of baseball information; and Joe Lefkowitz, coordinator of baseball systems development — to research the possible impact.

The three often evaluate potential free agents and draft prospects. During the season, they study the Mets’ players and their opponents and provide their insights to the coaching staff. They consider themselves the organization’s truth squad of sorts, using statistical analysis to confirm or dispel others’ beliefs.

For this project, they examined every ball hit to right-center in Citi Field last season, using a computer program to log how hard the ball was hit, its trajectory and other factors. They projected which of the balls would have been close to the right-center-field fence, or over it.

With that list in hand, they turned to video replay and determined that 27 drives to right-center would have been home runs if a portion of the fence had been moved in about 10 or 11 feet. Of those 27, 17 were hit by the Mets.

The numbers left the analytics team in Alderson’s corner: Moving in the fence made sense. “At the end of the day,” Levin said, “I think we came to the conclusion: At worst, it’s neutral. It hurts our pitchers and helps our hitters. It’s a wash. And at best, because we use that part of the field more than other people, it’s a benefit.”

Actually, the analytics team also found that over the course of 162 games last season, home and away, the Mets hit 90 more balls in the air to right-center field than their opponents did.

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Curtis Granderson is among the hitters the Mets say could benefit from a shorter fence in right-center. Lucas Duda and David Wright are the others.CreditBarton Silverman/The New York Times

Levin said those findings made sense, because three of the Mets’ most important offensive players often hit the ball to that part of the ballpark: David Wright, the face of the franchise; Lucas Duda, who hit 30 home runs last season; and Curtis Granderson, among the highest-paid players on the team, with three years and about $45 million remaining on his contract.

Of course, the closer fence in right-center could hurt the Mets’ pitchers, though the Mets contend that will probably not happen because their top pitchers induce more ground balls than fly balls. No matter; Alderson is mindful that in baseball, nothing sells like home runs.

“We’re talking about creating a little more excitement, a little more entertainment at the ballpark, which I think goes hand-in-hand with scoring,” Alderson said in a recent interview. “That’s not going to appeal to baseball purists. But we need more than baseball purists to fill the ballpark.”

Granderson clearly stands to benefit the most from the new alterations. In his first year with the Mets last season, he hit only 20 home runs, widely considered a disappointment. The Mets have seemed eager to help him as much as possible. They recently hired Kevin Long as their hitting coach, aware that Granderson had flourished under Long at times when they were both with the Yankees.

The Mets, however, reject the idea that they have undertaken the latest change to Citi Field with only one player in mind.

Alderson said he was done tinkering with Citi Field. But he and Levin agreed that analysis and statistics might compel other teams to begin making more frequent modifications to their stadiums.

All such changes must be approved by Major League Baseball, though there is no limit to how often a team can ask to alter its park’s dimensions. Teams must submit a diagram of the proposed changes, and in many cases a league official conducts a site inspection.

Joe Torre, the league’s executive vice president of baseball operations, has the final say. However, Joe Garagiola Jr., baseball’s senior vice president for standards and on-field operations, and his department review proposed changes on Torre’s behalf. Asked on Tuesday if he would allow a team to change its ballpark dimensions on a regular basis, Garagiola said such a situation had never arisen. “The changes I have dealt with, I believe, have all been in good faith,” he said.

Meanwhile, John Dewan, a founder of Baseball Info Solutions, said teams should check the analytics of their home parks regularly. He said he envisioned a future in which clubs changed their fences about once every 10 years to accommodate their evolving rosters.

Of course, the Mets are doing it for the second time in three years. They used analytics the last time, in 2011, but the data was less reliable. Not that it is foolproof now.

“The crazy thing is that data is unpredictable,” Levin said. “We could replay the 2014 season with the exact same roster, same everything, and have different numbers. All we know is basically what happened, and we can make our best guess as to what’s going to happen. But things still have to play out. Things could work out differently.”

In other words, even with the new fence, the Mets cannot assume they will end up with an additional 17 home runs. Looking out at the fence being built, Levin considered the possible unintended consequences.

“Watch,” he said. “Someone’s going to hit a home run that barely scrapes over the wall on opening day, and it costs us the game.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B14 of the New York edition with the headline: To Add Homers, the Mets Will Try a Little Subtraction. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe